these charming men
by Quill Scribblings
Summary: You fall in love with the Denoir heir, you'd expect to get your heart broken, wouldn't you? Then why does he continue to surprise you? Is it because you didn't expect Sirius to love you back, Remus? An undesirable situation, a cunning plot, and a happy ending.


The characters here are based off the works of JK Rowling, and, no, I really don't take any credit for their existence.

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_**he knows so much about these things**_

_**-**__This Charming Man, The Smiths_

"I'm getting married." He said.

The pantry boy didn't bat an eyelid. "Really."

"…yes. To my dear cousin Bella."

The pantry boy set down the soup pot roughly. The other man felt like he'd won somehow, but whether he wanted the prize or not; he deserved it.

"You're marrying _Bellatrix_?" He made the question seem as if it was the stupidest thing that he'd ever comprehended in his life. "That is the stupidest thing I've ever comprehended in my _life_."

"Yes, well." _I've got to do this. I've done stupider things, after_ _all._

The pantry boy didn't say anything. His eyes were very wide, and his face looked very pale. Angry. "I suppose you've bought a _ring_." His voice shook.

"I suppose I have."

He wondered how, as he left, it became so easy to lose being Sirius and to lose being Remus and to feel as though you were being torn in half on the inside.

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Remus exhaled loudly and clamped his lips over Sirius' collar bone to stay quiet. The scraping of his teeth against Sirius' skin as he thrust slowly and torturously into him made his approaching release more noticeable.

Remus reached down to the slick heat of Sirius trapped between their bodies.

"Kiss me," rasped Remus.

Each movement whispered _secret_, the way Remus touched him screamed _want_ (and how he came reminded him _need_), and afterwards, when Sirius held him, no words were needed to explain why.

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Thirteen year old Sirius skid into the kitchen on woollen socks and rubbed his hands together as he surveyed the larder for something to pocket.

The kitchen was known to be the darkest room at night, being underground, but to Sirius, it had plenty of resemblance to the rest of the rooms in his house. Then, out of the corner of his eye, one of the shadows moved.

"_Fuck_!" he half-whispered, half-screamed.

"_Who are you_?" a voice hissed back.

Heart settling in - thankgod – relief, he said quietly "Sirius."

"Nice to meet you, Sirius." The voice had a nice quality to it. It must belong to a nice person, then.

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"I go to school in the town." Remus said.

"Is that why you know so much?" Sirius asked him.

Remus lowered the book and smiled. "No, I like to read. They don't teach all that much in my school." Something sad had crept its way into that sentence.

"What is it?" pressed Sirius.

Remus looked at him, crinkly eyes full of a quiet kind of laughter that you usually found on a little old man but looked just right on Remus' fourteen year old face, as if Sirius being earnest was funny somewhat.

"The other kids think it's a bad thing if you want to learn things, and the teachers sometimes tell you off for reading at lunchtime."

"They tell you off for _reading_?"

Remus did laugh then, properly.

They heard someone on the stairs.

"Come on." Sirius grabbed Remus' hand, Remus grabbed his book, and they scampered down the secret passageway that led from the attic to the third floor lavatory.

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"You're back." Sirius leant against the doorway of the tiny servant's quarter. His hair had grown and his voice was deeper. Remus paused in unpacking his little suitcase and looked up. Sirius' breath caught in his throat.

"Well, you know." Remus' dimple appeared, alongside that crooked smile that was oh-so-familiar yet so unknown as well. "Summer again. Annual Black House Party. Got to be bigger and have more serviced tray-boys this time of year as a display of Extreme Wealth and frivolity and all that."

Sirius pulled a face. "What my cousins did last year was completely inexcusable. Prewett should have had better taste in," he shuddered, "women."

Something in Remus' eyes made him want to change the subject. "So, me and my mate Prongs going to the _Mighty Craic_ tomorrow," he waggled his eyebrows. "He's been dying to meet you, and he's bringing a few mates as well" "-Hang on," Remus intercepted. "_Prongs_, as in _James Potter_?"

Sirius gawked, dumbfounded, before bursting into barking laughter.

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"So _Remus_ is the charmin' lad who's bin workin' in _youuur_ house ov'r _all_ the holidays? My GOD."

It was safe to say That James Potter Was In Fact Absolutely and Completely Drunk. Such was expected whence you enter an Irish pub.

Sirius sighed. "Yes, we've tol' you tha' already." His glass swam in front of him.

"Oh... you have?"

"I'm taking James home." Peter announced, hoisting James' body over his shoulder, staying martyr-like oblivious to the 'Aw Pete, I _knew_ you were'n love wi' mee'. "You two go soon, okay?"

"Okay." Remus promised. It would have been quite sincere if he had been looking at Pete and not the wall beside Pete's head.

Peter nodded, satisfied, and marched out, James' arse leading the way.

"So." Sirius said, trying to look Remus in the eye. Remus blinked slowly as his gaze refocused on Sirius, and then burst out laughing.

"What?" Sirius cried, perturbed.

"Your eyes, they just went like," Remus crossed his eyes, and broke down howling.

Sirius giggled, and snorted to cover the giggle up. "Shuddup, you're jus' as worse."

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Orion Denoir poured amber liquid from dusty old bottle that he'd pulled from its hiding place of eight years behind the third from the left panel of the wall into a glass. If he was reduced to eradicating this time from his memory if only for a short while, then so be it. His marriage was barely existent, his 'businesses' were being shut down by international police, and now his life was in mortal peril.

Until the bottom of the bottle.

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"Do you suppose," Sirius scrubbed at a little black spot a little harder. If the silver spoon was the Denoir Family, then the little black spot must be… Remus! Of course. He stopped altogether and stared at the black spot, a feeling heavy in his heart of which he didn't wish to identify.

"Do I suppose…?" said Remus, paused in polishing silver spoons. Sirius blinked.

"Oh. Yeah. Do – do you suppose that, um, it's possible to - Have you ever…? Thought about, uh, say, guys."

Remus' face was unreadable.

"In… _that_ way." Sirius clarified, face burning up. He felt like a bit of a twat, feet up on the table, resolutely polishing a spoon. Why couldn't he just take his bloody feet –

"Yes."

There was impermeable silence, in which Sirius stared at Remus, and Remus stared at Sirius, and for the first time they didn't know what to say to each other.

"Do you still-"

"Yes."

Sirius felt the air whoosh out of him. "Oh."

Remus, startlingly pale, stood slowly. He moved around the work table, and towards Sirius. Heart pumping, and still clutching the damn spoon, Sirius stared at the fine knots in the knit of Remus' sweater vest, until it stopped before him. He bucked up the courage to stand up and look Remus in the eye, in the… honey brown eyes tickled by the tips of Remus' golden-brown hair.

And that's when he knew it was okay to kiss him.

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"You understand."

Orion felt that once-again familiar sense of self-perseverance and control settle comfortably around his shoulders like a fur cape once more. He acknowledged his son through appreciative eyes.

"Your good choice has protected us for now and for the rest of the future. In fact, you may need not ever trouble yourself with any social, ah, _predicaments_ ever again."

"Yes. Father." said the retreating figure of Sirius Denoir as he left his Father's study; quite sure he would never feel alive again.

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"What do you think?" Bellatrix crowed, lifting her skirts and stepping down from the stool. "Gorgeous, aren't I? God, look at me."

Sirius barely lifted his gaze. "Beautiful. I'm sure."

Bella ran her hand over her figure and slunk over to him, gazing (preying?) at him from beneath long, black lashes.

"You'll just want what's underneath, I suppose." She said, tracing his jawline with cool, long-nailed fingers. She leaned in. "Don't worry, you'll not be the first." she purred, and then gave a wicked giggle.

Sirius still didn't look up.

"Oh, cheer _up_, you'll perform _just_ as well as the others," she said over her shoulder, unzipping the dress. "Too bad Daddy had to be _naughty_ and go and get caught up in a silly mess. He shouldn't have taken all the bad men's _money_, now should he have?"

She grinned demonically at him, holding the dress up by clawing it roughly to her breasts, which were threatening to be revealed. Her grin faltered when she gained no response.

"Get over it." She ordered. "They'll want heirs, you know, and with my dowry you can buy all the whores in the country after we're done, get it? You just better be a damn good fuck."

That grin returned as she dropped the dress. "We could start now-"

Sirius fled.

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"You're not leaving?"

Remus paused in his stuffing of clothes into a suitcase to glare, furious, red-faced, at Sirius.

"There is _nothing_," he spat, "left for me here." He resumed packing, his actions being that as if he were pulling the guts out of a body in rewind.

Sirius threw himself into the room and closed the door. "No, NO! You can't fucking _leave_, I – _fuck_!"

He hurled himself at the window and closed it. Remus was looking at him scornfully. "I _can_ leave, and I will, if I know what's good for me." He trembled, scrubbing away the moistness of his cheek. By now, Sirius had one foot on the wall and one on a chair, and was yanking the metal air vents out of the wall with his bare hands. "…what the fuck are you – you'll hurt yourself!"

Remus' warning came a moment too late as Sirius overbalanced, and took the vent and part of the wall with him.

He lay on the floor, momentarily aghast as to how he got there, before his sight settled on Remus. "I am not marrying Bellatrix, not for money, or my life." He threw the vent down and scrambled to his feet, grabbing a pillow and stuffing it into the vent-hole.

Silence in the room. It was like stumbling across half the world to meet each other again.

"I love you." Sirius blurted the words like a heartbeat. "I love you, and want to spend the rest of my… proportional existence with you. My life. No, you're my…" The words got stuck in his throat.

Shock registered throughout Remus' body; his shoulders slumped, his expression slackened, and his torso twitched as if he had been punched in the stomach. Then, his eyes hardened and he folded his arms.

Sirius couldn't have had it spelled out more clearly to him.

"Orion's lost all of his money. He's even banked in on the inheritance left to Regulus and I, but it's all gone. As it so happens," Sirius took a deep breath, "he owes a fortune to an unidentified investor, who demand the full sum plus interest returned by the end of the month – assured, of course, by father dearest, that his eldest son will acquire such money in lieu of his marriage to a very wealthy Miss Bellatrix Denoir. Remus, I'm marrying her, but I'm only doing it to get the money off her to… I can't leave Reg, but look, see, me and James and Pete have a plan." Sirius stepped forward, grinning. "It's _brilliant_, and we can _do_ it: we're going to…" he lowered his voice, and murmured into Remus' ear.

His arm rested on Remus', and his breath tickled Remus' ear. He pulled back and nodded expectantly, looking so pleased with himself and Remus was exhausted and his nerves were wrecked and he'd spent so long without Sirius, and it was a good plan, really, despite its incredulity, but all he wanted to do was just kiss Sirius and take him to bed.

So he did.

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"Ready for your big day?" James pushed his glasses up his nose and forced back a guffaw at the bridegroom's attire.

"First off, fuck you, second off, we'll leave instructions to burn the wedding photographs in my will."

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Peter Pettigrew: may not look the finest of men, he had a distinct inability to detect the obvious, and his mother had him on speed-dial. But Remus was witness to an unnervingly quick lock-pick, superb detection of bank details, and discretion above all else, as shown by how he managed to get Sirius to forge the signature of Bellatrix and sign his own in the wings of the ball-room. And he was away before Remus knew it, allowing Sirius time to steal a kiss before Remus pushed him back into the throng of people in tight clothing and wigs, smiling like an idiot.

It wasn't long before the echo of two gunshots signalled the completion of Peter's work, and marked the beginning of chaos.

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In a town, a few hundred miles away, Sirius Black saw Remus Lupin for the first time in a long time.

"Fancy meeting you here," he gestured around the empty pub.

"Yes, well, I'd heard it'd been taken over by new management. I was wondering if there were any jobs available."

Sirius lit up. "Yeah?"

Remus threw himself into Sirius' arms. Peter coughed awkwardly and pushed James out the door.

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"To Pete! The best 'doctor' I've ever known!"

Sirius winked heartily, his cheeks ruddy, and Remus fought to tear his eyes away.

James laughed along with Sirius. "To success! To triumph! To getting away with it (for once!)"

"Hear hear!" cried Peter, emphatically.

"To love." Remus said simply, and Sirius kissed him sloppily whilst James banged on the table with his mug and Peter smiled serenely.

"Who wants more tea?" he asked.


End file.
